Grief and Loss

I've lost people I've loved before. My sister died when I was a teen. When I was in University I lost an aunt I was close to. More recently, I lost my mom and my aunt Laura. Death is part of being mortal, thus loss is something we'll all face and have to move through.

In some ways loosing my dad feels like the hardest hit yet.

Why has this been so tough for me? He was 89 and quite sick the last few months.

I think there are quite a few reasons. For one, I saw him almost every day the last four years. I miss his presence acutely in a way I didn't with some of the other losses I've faced. There is also the fact that we were close. I also think the fact that I was his care-giver has a role to play. This results in me sometimes feeling relief, but also a desperate kind of emptiness. To nurture someone for years and then have them gone leaves a gaping hole.

Taking care of my dad shaped my recent life and gave it purpose. When you have a child you nurture and care for someone, you put all kinds of energy into their well being, and you hold in your heart hope for their future, that all your time and love will hold them up in some way. But when you nurture someone who's near the end of life, what do you hope for? I spent hours upon hours, days upon days, months upon months with him, and now it's over. And to what end?

Those of us with disabling chronic illness know all about loss. We face monumental loss when we get sick, one that a mostly healthy person could never understand. If the chronic illness is disabling, we lose our jobs, perhaps relationships, and often our sense of identity - we can no longer do the things we once did.  I went through this huge loss in my early 30s. While I've been able to build a semblance of a life, I still feel the loss of a healthy body in small or large ways almost every day. (Too sick to go to a movie, a restaurant, a party, not being able to go for a run, or a hike, not being able to travel,  forced poverty or near poverty because I work minimally.) Basically, being disabled means having to deny ourselves almost everything that once brought us joy/pleasure - which is a constant process of loss.

Where am I going with this? Honestly, I guess I'm just kind of rambling.

Am I doing okay? Not really. I feel desperately alone in the world. I'm working part-time online again this semester and trying to motivate myself to so much as look at the screen, it's like torture. It all seems so pointless.

I had an iron infusion on Friday and it crashed me so hard that Saturday I barely moved (and when I did every cell ached). Thankfully I only have one infusion left in this round.